American writer Zora Neale Hurston was BOTD in 1891. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, she was raised in a self-governing Black township in which she was largely sheltered from racism. She moved to New York City in the 1920s to study anthropology at Howard and Barnard colleges. She began to write fiction, becoming a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance and befriending gay luminaries Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. Returning to Florida in the 1930s, she published Mules and Men, a literary anthology on African-American folklore and Tell My Horse, an anthropological study of voodoo rituals in Haiti and Jamaica, and also established a school of dramatic arts at Bethune-Cookman University. She is best known for her novels chronicling the struggles of African-American women, notably 1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In 1952, she reported on the trial of of Ruby McCollum, an African-American woman accused of murdering her white rapist. Married and divorced three times, she is also thought to have had relationships with women. Unable to make a living as a writer, her final years were marked by poverty and illness. She died in 1960, aged 69, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her work fell into obscurity until Alice Walker’s 1975 article Looking for Zora for Ms. magazine, describing the discovery of Hurston’s grave, sparking renewed interest in her life and work. In 2005, Oprah Winfrey produced a film version of Their Eyes Were Watching God starring Halle Berry. She has influenced writers including Walker, Toni Morrison and Zadie Smith.